This needs to be set each time the system boots. I'm sure there's a way to have 'init'
set this, or to put it into persistent properties, but I haven't done that yet.

Configuring a web proxy

The browser looks at system settings stored in a provider database for the http proxy.

The value for http_proxy is set in the following sqlite database:
/data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db

the setting goes in the 'system' table in this database, with a key of 99, a name of 'http_proxy' and a value that is a string containing your proxy server and port. I don't know if you can use a server name rather than just an IP address. I haven't done that.